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Kawani and Edward's Spring Wedding

March 22nd, 2008

Mestizaje

Welcome to our planning spot!

We want our wedding to be a huge celebration not only for us, but also those we are close to! It's going to be a semi-intimate event filled with spirituality as well as fun and good times. We are making an effort to be more ecologically responsible in our daily lives, so the wedding will also reflect that. All of our paper goods and edible items will be locally grown, recycled, recyclable, and self sustaining. We would not want to start of our new lives by degrading any others. We decided to hold our ceremony on one of the first days of Spring because that is Edward's favorite time of year. Springtime symbolizes renewal and reawakening, so I am ecstatic that we will be joining our lives during such a momentous season. Helpful websites for making weddings more ecologically responsible.

Our wedding ceremony will take place in a rose garden, but the reception will be held at a nearby hotel. The ballroom is beautiful, but we want a more outdoor feel, so we will be bringing the outside indoors through our decor.

Just

Us

Edward and I were fortunate enough to receive Amma's Darshan (blessing) on June 17th 2007. This is us waiting outside. For more info about Amma and her programs, please visit her website

Engagement Party

Sep 15th, 2007

and it was wonderful! It was awesome having all of our close friends and family there to celebrate our engagement with us! We had decided to have wine favors at the wedding, so we went in a few months ahead of time to participate in making the batches that we wanted to bottle. We figured that we would have the E-party there and have everyone come help us bottle and label the wine for the wedding. It was so much fun and everyone really got involved in the process! We both LOVE wine, so this type of party couldn't have suited us better!

Setting Up

Bottling wine

Family

Winos

My second Love!

Planning

Inspiration

*Flowers and Greenery*

Our flowers will be locally grown and DIY. I would also like to incorporate home grown wheat grass into the decor. We love the look of it and the fact that it's edible! Wheat grass on it's own tastes awful, but it's a healthy additive to juices and smoothies. I found some wonderful DIY instructions and inspiration from Shanbrite2

DIY

Do It Yourself

*Scrapbooks*

I made scrapbooks and picture frames to ask the wedding party to be apart of the ceremony.

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**Monograms**

We both worked on these and wound up using this one for our winebottle labels.

We will also use a simpler version of this monogram throughout the wedding and reception decor.

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**Invites**

I decided that since we're going to use recycled paper for our invites, I would try and make my own. After going to bridal shows and signing up for info online, we have been inundated with junk mail, postcards and fliers. So, we saved it up to recycle into invites. It took a couple of times to get the process perfected to create the type of paper we wanted. Here are 3 sites that I used for info: Of The Earth , Urban Debris and Kids Gardening

This is the look we are going for:

This is the process:

Edward made a frame template out of wood and houshold screen.

1st- Rip paper into small pieces and add to blender. Add warm water and let soak until paper starts to break down. Add in starch and blend it up until smooth.

2nd- Pour into container large enough to dip your screen mold into. Continue to add more pulp and water until you have the thickness you want. Then add in flower petals, leaves, etc. Everytime Edward gives me flowers I dry them, so I used some of those along with twigs and leaves I gathered from outside.

3rd- Dip your screen mold into container holding flat. Bring up your mold with the pulp evenly on top. Use a sponge to flatten and soak up excess water.

4th- Turn paper out on towel or flannel and let dry. My first batch, I dried overnight. The 2nd batch, I dried with a fan and it took just a couple of hours.

5th- Assembly. We purchased vellum, recycled cardstock, recycled envelopes and eco-twist from Of The Earth . Their products, delivery and customer service is excellent! I've visited their site many times and spoke with them over the phone. I love their commitment to supplying beautiful earth friendly products.

Finished product, all assembled and mailed. I was so excited that Edward found spring flowers stamps to top them all off!

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**Centerpieces**

Here is a trial of our flower boxes with wheat grass. Edward made this wooden box and stained it. I grew the grass using wheat berry seeds. This is day 5. Day eight is ideal, because by day 10 the grass was a little out of control!

This is day 11 and you can see how wild the grass was. I was trying to wait until our Friday Farmer's Market to purchase gerbera daisies. I didn't want to cut the grass because we don't want any blunt edges, but in these pictures the grass is a bit wilder than we would like. I will start growing the grass eight days before the wedding, so it's ready to go on the day of.

BTW- Most dogs love wheatgrass and it's safer for them than the outdoor stuff with all the pesticides and stuff on it.

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**Veil**

I have been set on wearing a french net veil since I saw one pictured with my dress in a magazine. After searching around at a few styles, I decided to make my own. I used this site for guidance Bird cage veil . First I did a trial using regular net and standard combs to make sure I had my sizing right. For my actual veil, I purchased french net and embellished combs.

I have to work with the placement of my combs a bit. I think I have it on to tight in these pics. I am not sure if I will wear live flowers with it or some type of hair jewelry.

I bought 2 yards of net and needed less than one, so I may use the remaining net on our bouquets. Something like this. Disregard the sad looking gerbers. They had been through many DIY trials by this point, but I just wanted to see how it would look.

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**Table Runner**

This project turned out to be alot of fun. I took our monogram to kinkos and had them blow it up to 32x32 and print it out in black and white. I bought 3 yards of an off white, cotton and polyester blend fabric. I only used about 2 yards, but I wanted more just in case I made a mistake. We already had paint and paint pens at home, so I traced the monogram image on the fabric and then we filled it in with the paints. I let it dry overnight and then hemmed the edges with stitch witchery.

This will be displayed hanging at the front of the head table at the reception.

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**Water Bottles**

Our ceremony takes place outside, so we wanted to have water available. I bought 3 cases of water and took the original labels off. I replaced them with these labels created in powerpoint. It just a little extra detail that I thought would be nice for our guests.

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**Other Details**

For the flower basket, I just added some pink ribbon to brighten it up. We wanted to keep it very organic looking and our flower girl will be carrying bouquets in here, so I didn't want to over do it.

I looked in a bunch of used goods stores for a ring bearer box, but never found what I had in mind. I found this beauty on sale at Target. It has the worn look that I wanted and it's the perfect size. We will continue to use it for our rings after the wedding. Edward's happy because he says it looks like something from "Lord of the Rings"!

I used leftover material from my dress sash to make a small pillow to put inside the box. I sewed 2 pink ribbons on top to keep the rings in place. I probably should have made the pillow bigger. I may make another one before the wedding day.

I used leftover material from the table runner to cover a box for the disposable cameras. I trimmed it in brown ribbon and will add a sign to the front of it. When the cameras are full or at the end of the night, the guests can deposit them here.